Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said that the new measure was
meant to protect local industry.

More likely, it is also another measure to control the flow of
capital out of the country. Argentina's foreign reserves are
incredibly low. After paying $900 million in debt the last week
of December,
government officials put foreign reserves at under $30
billion. The bank responded to this dip by injecting and
additional $100 million.

There's more debt where all this came from. This week alone the
country offered to hand $10 billion over to The Paris Club for
debt dating back to its 2001 collapse.